Do restaurant workers eat like kings, or do they get your leftovers? Tom Mitchelson reveals the secrets of the staff dinner

An assistant cook once told me that he was fired for eating a chicken Kiev.
Hungry after a long shift, he was tucking in out back when the eagle-eyed
restaurant manager tapped him on the shoulder and gave him his cards for
stealing and cooking the leftover.

I’d also heard that staff meals in one famous TV chef’s restaurant were an
unremitting diet of fried eggs, so I asked a friend who works at a
middle-range restaurant in South London what she is given. “Staff meals?
Don’t make me laugh,” she scoffed. “If you’re ravenous at the end of a